It seems that President Donald Trump’s boorish panache has its limits across our northern border; on Monday night Liberal Party candidate (and incumbent prime minster) Mark Carney won the Canadian election after taking aim at Trumpian rhetoric.
“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country,” Carney said in a victory speech in Ottawa. “But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, ever happen.”
Below, find everything you need to know about Carney and the current Canadian political landscape:
Who is Mark Carney?
An economist by trade, Mark Carney studied economics at Harvard and Oxford and worked at Goldman Sachs and the Bank of Canada before being named senior associate deputy minister for Canada’s finance department in 2004. He then served as governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013 and the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, leading the latter’s response to Brexit and COVID.
Carney was also chairman of Switzerland’s Financial Stability Board from 2011 to 2018 and was appointed the United Nations special envoy for climate action and finance in 2021 before being made chair of the Liberal Party’s economic-growth task force in September 2024.
Following Justin Trudeau’s resignation earlier this year, Carney was elected prime minister of Canada by a landslide in March, becoming the first Canadian PM to have never previously held elected office.
Carney is married to British economist and climate-policy expert Diana Fox Carney, with whom he has four children.
Who was Carney’s opponent?
Carney faced off against Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who went on to also lose his seat in the Parliament of Canada to Bruce Fanjoy. Poilievre still attempted to strike a galvanizing note in his concession speech, however, telling the audience: “To my fellow Conservatives, we have much to celebrate tonight. We’ve gained well over 20 seats. We got the highest share of votes our party has received since 1988. We denied the NDP and Liberals enough seats to form a coalition government.” (He also congratulated Carney on his win, which…is apparently something Canadian politicians do? The American mind boggles!)
What has Trump said about Canada lately?
Trump consistently backed Poilievre in the election, writing on Truth Social on Election Day: “Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America.”
This “51st state” thing has become a favorite talking point of Trump’s in recent months, which may help to explain some of the turnout from pro–Liberal Party Canadian voters.
